Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Idol Chatter, Finale Edition (Part II)

DVRBlogging the AmericanIdol season finale, because there is no way I'm watching it live. And I already saw a tweet about the appearance of a certain "comedian" that already has my fast-forward finger twitching. Let's do it:

8:00: With the school outfit, is Lee in Gryffindor or Slytherin? This is very important.

8:02: All of the old Idol winners are there. Begging for spare change from Carrie Underwood.

8:05: The top twelve is performing "School's Out" by Alice Cooper. This is starting out just as bad as I feared. And now Alice Cooper himself is strutting around the Idol stage. I just cried one tear like the fake Indian in that littering commercial. Oy, this is bad.

8:12: Coming out of commercial, someone forgot to turn on Ryan's mic. Then, as that guy I don't remember except for from Ford commercials started to sing some horrible song, they forgot to turn it off. Somehow, Ryan talking was better sounding than Kris singing. Fast-forward.

8:15: Oh, it's funny video time. Nobody does comedy like the Idol team! It's a good idea for them to show us a retrospective on how great Simon was so that we can remember why nobody wants to watch the show next year.

8:18: Siobhan Magnus and Aaron Kelly here to remind us why we hated this season. And they've dragged out the surviving members of the Bee Gees. I've realized that tonight will be train wreck TV and I won't fast-forward nearly as much as I anticipated. This is painful. It's boring and it sounds bad. Ladies and gentlemen, your American Idol season nine.

8:26: Big Mike singing "Taking It To The Streets". Please bring out Michael McDonald for the weirdest duet in recent memory. This is actually making me miss Taylor Hicks. And now C. Everett Koop is singing circles around Mike!

8:29: Here it is! Dane Cook singing a song! My brain just melted out of my nose a little. Kleenex break while I fast-forward.

8:34: I seriously don't remember this girl's name. I know Didi and Katie, but who was the first one? I'm not kidding. I just looked it up: Lacey Brown. Ugh, Crystal was seriously the only good girl this year. So far all of the performances are just as bad as anything from the whole season. I really don't remember half of these people. We're sitting on the couch racking our brains.

8:37: And here is Christina to obliterate the other singers in just two notes. Now, she's doing the single that everyone seems to hate. Including me! Fast-forward.

8:42: Ricky Gervais doing a taped piece to roast Simon. He totally big-timed that, not even trying that hard. Sad.

8:47: Lee sounds pretty good here, especially next to Andrew Garcia. Can we ruminate for one second on how awful Lee was last night? He was really, really bad. As bad as it's about to be awesome when they bring out Darryl Hall and John Oates in a minute.

8:48: Slick dance moves, guys! And here come Hall and Oates! They refuse to do a close-up on John Oates. Tim Urban is getting more screen time. Hall and Oates rock.

8:52: The people of Toledo are excited because they think the camera is stealing their souls and they'll finally get to leave northern Ohio. At least it means that Crystal is about to sing. I think she's my favorite contestant since David Cook and I think she may be better long-term than he is (was?).

8:54: Alanis comes out to sing a duet of "You Oughta Know" that includes the line, "Would she go down with you to the theater?" I don't remember that one from the original. Crystal's holding her own here. She's doing much better than Lee will when he does his duet with Lou Bega.

9:00: It's time for the prerequisite "embarrass the contestants" performance by Carrie Underwood. It's pretty hard to imagine that she actually came from this show in the first place. She can sing a little.

9:04: I like Kris Allen pretending like he's super bad-ass. The bad phony acting was one thing, but Crystal's non-sequitir "I like sunflowers" is the stuff of legends.

9:06: Casey James just came out, singing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". Oh, no. I know what's coming next and I'm not excited for it. The winner of Celebrity Apprentice is coming out. You could hear him because his strumming was off from Casey's. I don't think we would have ever anticipated that Bret Michaels would sing well enough to blow someone off the stage.

9:13: Commercial for The Good Guys. I was not impressed by the pilot.

9:14: Idol is doing stuff over Myspace. Look, you can't turn the clock back to 2003 so Simon will stay, no matter how hard you try.

9:15: I was wrong. Lee is singing with Chicago. I suppose that fits appropriately, boredom-wise. A reminder that David Cook performed with ZZ Top on his finale and Adam Lambert with KISS on his.

9:18: Another Simon video after we see 45-year-old Matt Rogers. Thanks for the reminder to watch X Factor, guys!

9:21: You knew this was coming. General Larry Platt. "Pants on the Ground". You'd think he could have used all this time to come up with more words. It actually has fewer words than the original version. This is awful. Idol even succeeded in ruining "Pants on the Ground".

9:22: No, William Hung can't even save this. Shameful. At this point, I'm hoping it turns out that they were all dead at the end.

9:28: They're using Paula an awful lot in this episode. Kara's gotten better, but the chemistry between the judges now is nothing like it used to be.

9:30: Paula and the judges kissing each other's asses is pretty bad. How come Brian Dunkleman doesn't get to come out and ramble for five minutes?

9:32: My wife is very amused that I was so excited when Paula mentioned MC Skat Kat. Big smile on my face.

9:33: With this Simon retrospective -- the third of the night, by the way -- you'd think that the show was going off the air. It's not?

9:35: All of the past Idol winners are coming out. And, yes, Carrie Underwood is singing circles around the rest of them. It's so great to see all seven winners together! Seven? David Cook didn't feel like showing up?

9:37: And here come way too many finalists. Guarini alert! Guarini alert! Plus, I vowed never to listen to Blake Lewis do anything again and now that promise has been broken. Dammit.

9:39: Simon comes up for a speech. The way this is going, you'd think he was more important than any actual contestants, right? On an unrelated note: X Factor! Next year!

9:45: This year's top twelve sings together. It's a shock every time that I remember how bad they were. Janet Jackson walks out on stage to easily her worst backup group ever. They can save the season right now. Have Janet do "Rhythm Nation" with the top twelve as her backup dancers. Do it. I triple-dog dare you.

9:49: They missed the chance. Janet is doing "Nasty" with her own dancers. Yes, I called her by her first name, which should tell you how I consider my own nastiness level.

9:51: We're into the last twenty minutes or so of the season and Janet just did six or seven minutes with no Idol people on the stage. I'm not complaining, but that seems a bit much.

9:54: They're doing "With a Little Help from My Friends". Well, Lee, I didn't stand and walk out on you last night, so does that answer that question?

10:01: At least the listings had the show going late this year instead of pretending that it would end at 10 and having everyone's DVRs stop recording. We're moments away from Lee winning and people with taste being disappointed.

10:03: With the bad "Lee Wins!" graphic behind the winner, the most unsurprising moment on the worst season of the most over-the-hill show has come and gone. So I'll leave American Idol with that last bit of hyperbole as Ryan talked so much that the band essentially played him off so that Lee's song could make it in by the end of the show and Lee began singing a really bad cover really horribly. Maybe I'll catch one episode next year to see how bad it gets without Simon, but I'm done. Idol out.

I'm not a Carrie fan per se, but she is a great performer. I (relatively) like Kelly Clarkson's music more, but I've still yet to buy any CDs from any of them.

I agree about the Simon thing. They barely had any hype about Crystal and Lee until they squeezed the results in at the very end. Janet spent as much time on the stage by herself as Ryan spent with the finalists for the results and aftermath. Do you think Adam made people care that much last year (the votes totals last year were way higher than this, to the point that Ryan didn't give the final vote total) or was it the Davids or even earlier?